Jims of Wyzdom for July 26, 2019
We’re just over a month into summer, which means I have NO opera, NO movies, and NO good concerts to recommend to you. What’s left…oh, someone said that this time of year is when we are without any major sports, but someone else corrected them by saying “baseball!” So, if that’s your thing…go for it. As for me, my cool sunroom is inviting, and I have over 50 books on the Kindle that I should try to finish.
There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want, and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. [Writer Pearsall Smith]
Ah, yes…to get what you want. A wisdom keeper said that human beings require two things: to love and to be loved, and then went on to write a whole book on the topic. Is it possible? Recently, Bonnie and I passed that milestone of being married for 50 years. It wasn’t a moment when we could say, “whew, we made it…now what?” It certainly was a reminder that the love we first shared at 23 was still burning bright. My favorite theological writer, John Shelby Spong, suggested that to achieve all that I’ve written here so far, you need a mantra that goes like this: “Be fully human, be all that you can be, and love wastefully.” I think this sentiment pretty much agrees with the ancient Greeks, for whom life was to be split into three parts: body, mind and spirit. How many of us could say that we purposefully spend 1/3 of our entire day, month, year, life on each of those things—body, mind and spirit? I would suggest that it is mainly people employed in the religious life that can most easily achieve this balance, because that is their business! If we’ve never been able to have this balance because of career, family, kids, et al, maybe we could try to do it in retirement, because, folks, it’s never too late…
Life has taught me that it knows better plans than we can imagine, so that I try to submerge my own desires, apt to be too insistent, into a calm willingness to accept what comes, and to make the most of it, then wait again. I have discovered that there is a Pattern, larger and more beautiful than our short vision can weave… [Writer Julia Seton]
Did you know that in Native American custom, if you are over 50, you are automatically an elder, a wisdom keeper. I had turned 50 just weeks before I went on one of those long weekend men’s retreats with the guru of men’s issues, Marvin Allen and his pal Coyote. That weekend changed my life and/or realigned how I thought about everything. It allowed me to share my grief over my mother’s death-by-smoking and be held as I let out all the anger and sorrow I felt. Near the end, on the last day, Coyote told us about the elders of 50+ and how it was our responsibility to love and counsel the young. He also recommended listening to our common sense and stop suffering fools in order to have the wisdom to teach fools a better way and then, to hold them to it for as long as it would take for the healing to mature. Pretty profound stuff, but I came away determined to try to work on these things and to achieve a better balance like the Greeks and Mr. Spong.
Zen Student: “What happens after death?” Zen Master: “I do not know.” Zen Student: “How can that be? You are a Zen Master!” Zen Master: “But I am not a dead Zen Master.” Quoted by Ran Dass]
Keep calm and carry on!
Jim